


Outlive, Outlast

by Merixcil



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: F/M, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 01:49:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7782181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merixcil/pseuds/Merixcil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Burr counts his life in deaths.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outlive, Outlast

**Aaron Burr (Sr.), Esther Burr (née Edwards)**

Aaron remembers his parents faces growing up, just about. By the time he turns fifteen he has memories of memories of stern brows and earnest devotion (his father) and a sharp smile tinged with impatience (his mother). But as a child he remembers them, he’s sure of it. When he and Sally are led out from under the roof that was supposed to be theirs by right there must be a moment of recollection.

The trouble is he is so young, his mind barely beginning to form, struggling to process the myriad of emotions that his station demands he comes to terms with. “There’s a good lad,” William Shippen mumbles when Aaron manages not to cry at the news of his mother’s death.

Of course he didn't cry, he is two, he doesn't know what it meant for a person to be dead. Come bed time, he asks for Esther and is told by a flustered and ill prepared matron that she will not be coming to tuck him in this or any other night.

Sally is five, old enough to understand. She curls up in that big new house and wails, a dusky little ghost screaming for her life back. She refuses to let anyone touch her hair, she wants it left just the way it had been when Esther had last braided it, and so the family of William Shippen is permitted treated to the messy outpouring of a child’s grief, peeling away from her scalp in dry, disused strands.

They are moved on, no one quite wants them enough. First, to the house of their uncle Timothy Edwards, then to his wife’s home in New Jersey. There are other children then, Matthias and another Aaron and Johnathan who lives next door. Sally joins them sometimes, hair still flyaway but the wailing stopped, and the five of them tear across the lush green lawns at the foot of New York in search of adventure.

Looking back on his life, Aaron will always think of green grass and laughing children when prompted to remember the place he grew up. Some years later, he and Sally are presented with old portraits of their parents.

Sally gasps, tears jumping to her eyes, because to her the pictures made sense, slipped in amongst her memories where the likenesses belonged. Aaron stares blankly into the eyes of his father, and sees only paint.

 

**The easy bits. The grass beneath his feet.**

There seemed no question that Aaron and Aaron (the two of them, with their shrieking school boy improprieties) would follow Matthias to the College of New Jersey. Johnathan following in their footsteps when the time came right. Such is the way of the world, how young men are made.

Sally was to stay at home, making eyes at the tutor that up till now had been enough for the both of them. Aaron will miss her, but he resolves not to say as much. Increasingly he finds his emotions stuck in his throat, unwilling to be cast out into the world in the same manner that his body was ever to be passed from household to household till he came of age.

They part in almost perfect silence, Sally humming meaningless musings on when she might come to visit. Aaron will not hold his breath for such a pleasure. Besides, he will have his studies to concern himself with.

And indeed, his studies do concern him. They keep Aaron up, night after night, candlewax dripping across the pages of textbooks and essays alike as he tries to absorb as much of the teachings if his professors as he might. The ghost of his father hangs over him, a constant reminder that frivolities will only get in the way of the task at hand.

Aaron enters the College of New Jersey just shy of fourteen, his degree is in his hands at sixteen. Two years, more or less, it’s an impressive feat. He has applied himself and found the outcome pleasing, so he takes up the offer of a masters. It’s only an extra year.

“Father would be so proud,” Sally embraces Aaron with a passion he fears he will not be able to reciprocate. He is going to study theology, under a Presbyterian minister. Johnathan teases him that he will become old and dry before his time, it’s a struggle to think he won’t.

Aged sixteen, Aaron is old enough that people know him by his last name before his first. Professors snap it out, sharp as a switchblade when it suits them to get his attention. His classmates let it drift listlessly off their tongues like an afterthought. Aaron (the other Aaron, the man fast becoming known as Ogden) says it with a lazy irreverence that does little to convince either of them he means it.

They have always been Aaron and Aaron, Burr and Ogden sound too distant from each other. But now Aaron Ogden has decided to leave and enter the world of work. The physical divide between the two of them seems a hellish sort of fantasy that is difficult to imagine them ever devising of their own accords.

Matthias tends to the family business back home in that house with the green grass lawn, Johnathan is two years below Aaron (Burr?). They write missives in the dark, or at least Aaron does, letting one too many sincerities leak out of their pens. It’s easier than choking on emotions face to face.

Sally marries their old tutor, Tapping Reeve. It’s a lovely service, light on the fire and brimstone that Aaron finds in his books. He wants to believe, for the sake of the parents he can’t quite remember, for the sake of a painting with eyes he cannot recognise, for the sake of the lofty expectations he has placed on his own back.

The sun shines for them, Sally looks resplendent in white. Aaron watches her slip through his fingers with dry eyes and a heart screaming at him to weep. She is part of another family now, he has no one to stand up for but himself.

Back at college, Aaron takes a razor to the hair growing into a soft halo atop his head. He is no saint. It comes away in flyaway streaks, like the curls that had torn themselves loose of Sally’s braids over a matter of months when they were young. Only this time they cannot be tucked back into place. When he is done the sink is full of close knit curls and his head is clean. Wide eyes stare out of a face that tries desperately to blend in with the walls behind him but can’t quite manage.

Or he blends in too well, and is struggling to become fully corporeal. It’s hard to say, he’s not yet sure he’ll like the answer.

 

**Aaron.**

Alexander Hamilton arrives out of nowhere, and proceeds to occupy exactly as much space as he can argue his way into. Burr would be lying if he said he wasn’t flattered by the attention, “Talk less, smile more,” he tells this overeager, overachieving bag of bones.

It’s not what Hamilton wants to hear, it’s what he needs to hear. Neither of them will be able to say as much with any confidence until it is too late, by then only Burr will be able to speak.

Still, for all his doggedness and obnoxiously well written essays, Hamilton makes easy company. He is desperate for companionship in a way Burr finds uncomfortably familiar, with no shred of a legacy to defend. Building himself up, brick by brick, relentless.

Perhaps Burr is less in tune with Hamilton than he would like to be.

The British raise taxes, the colonies revolt, Hamilton writes damning letters to unionist farmers in between classes. War looms low on the horizon, only a matter of time till the pressure falls low enough for the clouds to break open and rain down hell upon them.

Burr tells himself he doesn’t care, but finds the tug of a greater cause too much to bear. Hamilton has a foot out of the door, ready to fight, from the moment independence is first proposed, it is a surprise to find the two of them stepping out in tandem.

 

**The union. Two hundred and seventeen thousand people.**

Massachusetts is the first to fall, with a splash or temper tantrum (depending on which side of the Atlantic you’re viewing it from), Boston harbour will smell like tea leaves for years. The Continental Congress moves slowly, then quickly, and almost entirely of its own accord. The Declaration of Independence is circulated far and wide, and though people are excited by the prospect of a brand new start they do not want to see conflict in their times.

The room where it happens feel further from New Jersey than the paltry distance between their side of the river and New York. Burr starts to stutter out his prayers, pays more attention to Johnathan’s wild cries for revolution than he should. When the Continental Army is declared, he slams his books shut and makes his way to Canada.

At first they trek and trek and trek and dear Lord when will this hellish country end? Snow sticks to Burr’s coat with such uniform intensity that he forgets what it feels like not to carry the extra weight. They take Quebec under Colonel Benedict Arnold, only for Burr to be sent upriver to Montreal to retrieve General Montgomery.

Matthias marches with him, the two of them leaning firm on each other’s shoulders as they brave the treacherous terrain. There is no green grass here, just a feeling of steady elation.

It would all be awful, except it’s not. There is camaraderie amongst the men that doesn’t stick in his throat and Burr knows he would not have been chosen to bring the General home if he hadn’t already distinguished himself. That feeling of standing out amongst the crowd is alien and wild to him, to be both a part of the heard and to rise above it. He writes excited letters to Aaron, Johnathan, sometimes even Hamilton, sharing stories of his escapades and they write back with nothing but encouragement. The military suits him, the action suits him.

Blood stains the snow where they walk and they all tell themselves it is a necessary sacrifice. They pass ghost towns decimated by disease. Independence had better be worth it. Matthias’s blood will join them before the fight is through, thank God it will not be a fatal wound.

 _It will be worth it_ , Aaron writes, _we will defeat the British in glorious battle or die upon these fields._

Word travels faster than one might have thought during wartime. When Quebec falls it is a matter of weeks for Burr to receive a letter inviting him to join General Washington as one of his aides de camp. It is supposed to be an honour, he supposes, though the days spent writing, far from the battlefield, do not feel glorious or mighty.

Burr tries to respond to Aaron and Johnathan’s requests for accounts of the General’s character, but Washington doesn’t seem to like him much. Hamilton is stationed under His Excellency’s commands in the same manner as Burr, which is something of a relief. Often times they find themselves up till strange hours, elbows knocking against each other as they try to write by the light of the same candle.

Sometimes letters come in from Sally, she seems scared and sounds weak, frequently referencing an illness that causes her much undue pain. Burr aches to run home and ensure she is well taken care of and comfortable. He must remember that is no longer his place. He is lonely here in a way he never was on the march, there is no immediate brotherly bond to be found between him and any of the men he shares this space with, save Hamilton who he knew from before.

Hamilton has friends, John Laurens, the Marquis de Lafayette, even Washington himself seems keen to spend time in the presence of the young upstart. Burr falls to the wayside, attracting Alexander’s attention infrequently. It is not of much surprise to any of them when he throws down his pen and declares that he wishes to be sent back out on to the battlefield.

The advantage of his reputation is not lost on Burr, he appreciates what the right attitudes in the right places can do for him. General Putnam takes him under his wing almost immediately, citing his services to General George Washington and his outstanding record in Quebec as precedent. It is a wonderful thing to be singled out in such a manner. Burr preens when no one else is looking, and works doggedly when they are. He forms easy friendships with men he barely knows, he carefully cages his emotions when he responds to Hamilton’s seemingly unending letters.

British ships land in Kip’s Bay, the Continental Army is not prepared for them, for the force with which they advance. Burr is given a column of men to steer through the hellscape that unfolds before their eyes, the ground littered with bodies unmarked by uniform and so, presumably, American. It is hard not to imagine one’s own blood mingling with the waters of the Hudson, and indeed, many men flee.

Through the fray, those men bold enough to stay run ragged, desperately attempting to piece their meagre advantages into some form of defence against the canons that bombard the shoreline. Burr holds his line steady, attempts to put matters of death and bloodshed aside, even as the scent of butchery wells up through the night.

The Continental Army must retreat into the hills of Harlem, the canons begin to stutter to a halt. Washington descends upon the masses in fury, “are these the men with which I am meant to defend America?” and any pride that they might have felt at staying is washed away. This is their duty.

A brigade is still missing from the pack. Burr takes it upon himself to head down into the city and do what he can to assist them. He is surprised to find them dragging British artillery through the New York streets, and less surprised to find Alexander Hamilton at the head of the operation.

Hamilton is collapsed over his canon by the time Burr arrives, his eyes closed in unconsciousness. Burr remembers that he made mention of an illness the last time he wrote, and thinks it odd that he should be on the battlefield at all. Like this, the life within him looks as if it could have been snuffed out.

For a moment, Burr wonders if he will only see Hamilton’s eyes in paint from this day forth, but then he discerns a pulse moving beneath the man’s skin. They escape, with the Battalion, back into the hills, and concede that the night has been won by the British.

If ever he doubted the General’s love for him, Burr knows that he is not liked by His Excellency come the morning. There is no commendation for him, no rise through the ranks. And so it shall remain, all the while Hamilton ascends as if it were no matter.

Burr takes command of Colonel Malcom’s men, in action if not in title. He defends New Jersey and the green grass on which he played as a child, he keeps safe the house of Timothy Edwards and his wife Rhoda, he protects Sally and Tapping Reeve. Despite his well-known military exploits of which the public are grateful for, his official rise through rank is slow and arduous. Wait for it, he tells himself, good things come to those who wait.

 

**Bachelorhood**

The war is not yet over, the Continental Army is stuck between its few friends that now litter the land. Burr supposes it is strange for them to fight so ardently for a cause that so many of their countrymen could not confidently believe in, but it has been started now, and so it must be finished.

Some friends of independent America are rough and coarse, others brimming with admiration. On rare occasions, more noble allies step in to provide assistance. Burr takes no shame in admitting that he prefers these occasions, happily slipping into some measure of comfort as is afforded the officers.

Theodosia Prevost is straight backed, straight forward, and altogether more generous than this ragtag excuse for a military deserves. She takes a liking to Burr almost instantly, persuading him to return her affections with wise words and sharp tongued witticisms. She loans him books and demands to know all that resides in his head. He feels so very exposed before her, like she is seeing him for all that he is. A portrait of her husband, stationed in the West Indies and long gone for all she cares, hangs over the fireplace, his painted eyes dull.

“I believe women to be the intellectual equals of men,” Burr retorts, when Theo growls out her frustrations over her four daughters being restricted from education by their father.

Theo’s oldest daughter is called Sally, she asks that he dispense with the long form of her name almost immediately, “my opinion was not asked before I entered into this marriage, Aaron. Why should I uphold the vows?”

No one has called him Aaron in such a long time. Burr sucks in a breath, screws his courage to the sticking place, and kisses Theo in full view of her husband’s portrait. He is overwhelmed by her, her words and her frankness. She does not allow him to mask his feelings, and the honestly with which he addresses her feels more scandalous than the adultery he assists her in.

Meanwhile, husbands and wives are falling into step with each other all around him, Matthias, Aaron, Johnathan, Hamilton – all to young girls whose beauty is obvious and transparent. Burr is suddenly very much aware of the ten years that lie between him and Theo, and the pressures that living in sin would put upon her.

They trade letters and books. Burr is lucky enough to stumble across a British volume titled A Vindication of the Rights of Women. He devours it and sends it on and dear Theo writes back, ecstatic with the thought that there are people out there willing to be bold about their belief in the equal standing that should be afforded between men and women.

Writing to Sally, Burr tells her of his love, _she has an honest and affectionate heart_ , he says, because he cannot begin to describe her mind. Sally writes back cautioning him against involvement with a married woman, but by then it appears everyone already knows.

“Silly of us, to keep up the charade for propriety’s sake,” Theo sighs. Burr reminds her that plausible deniability will aid them greatly should anyone wish to accuse them of unseemly involvement with each other.

By the time news comes of Jacques Marcus Prevost’s death, it feels they have waited an age, “good riddance,” Theo mutters softly. Then she asks Burr to marry her.

 

 **Good health. Glory.**  
In the wake of the chill they all felt at Valley Forge, perhaps it’s understandable that Burr no longer is well suited to the heat. General Lee lets himself be shamed at the battle of Monmouth, leads them so close to defeat that for a moment it seems the whole sky may come tumbling down upon America to punish them for their hubris.

The sun circles high in the sky, there is not enough water. Burr falls ill, and does not recover himself entirely for the rest of the war. He has always had patience to spare, but he can feel it going rancid with overuse as he is confined to his home for month upon month.

Theo finds him all manner of new texts to read, and it gives Burr time to write to his friends properly, though they rarely have time to respond. Even Hamilton, ever the keen writer, seems distant and too much occupied with his station for correspondence.

“There is no need to rush, my dear,” Theo chides him, for the work he tries to do from the side-lines, for the infantry he tries to rally to the cause. Burr tells her how he feels his hard won recognition slipping through his fingers, she is sympathetic, but not so much that she will let him run off.

One morning they wake up and the war is over, decided at Yorktown. The British have relinquished the American colonies, and just like that they are free. Independent. They hold these truths to be self-evident.

Burr waltzes Theo around the entry hall of the home they share, smiling, unconcerned with the future, if only for these few blessed minutes. The world has no need for war heroes any more.

 

**Matthias Ogden. Theodosia Burr (née Bartow). Sally Reeve (née Burr).**

Politics comes naturally to Burr, not that he intended to. He takes a seat in the New York Assembly because he is asked, then he finds he likes it and takes to his next task as State Attorney General.

Together, he and Hamilton have forged new precedents in the legal system, fought on trials against each other and together. Work is beginning to overrun their lives, and the friends they made in wartime seem far behind.

“How is Laurens?” Burr asks, assuming Hamiton will know.

Hamilton says nothing, Burr will find out from other sources that John Laurens is dead. He will try not to think too hard on his friend’s silence. It is hard enough ensuring that his own emotions stay bottled for posterity's sake, he would not wish such an outpouring from anyone else.

It seems only logical to run for Senate when the time comes. The defeated Philip Schuyler leaves with good graces – a proud man, and Hamilton’s father in law. The namesake of his son. The personal and the political seem to blend for the briefest moment, though Burr tries to push them apart.

Theo is gone, their shared home feels empty without her. Aaron tries to work through his grief but it doesn’t work for him like it works for Hamilton’s memories of Laurens. Their daughter, also named Theodosia is too old to not be struck by her mother’s death. Young Theo is a smart girl, gifted with every educational advantage she should be afforded, she grieves but she manages to hold her head up higher than her father’s as she does so.

A whole half of the bed is empty. More than once Aaron considers paying for the privilege of having it filled for the night, but every time he is on the verge of heading into the city to find a girl, Theo’s ghost sits up straight behind him, and he cannot bring himself to sully her memory like that, not here.

He sits down to write to Aaron and tell him in plain terms of what has befallen his family, he hopes the desperate cry for a friendly shoulder will he heard, but expects little to come of it. He writes to Johnathan to tell him of the excitement of politics, of how John Adams shows him his admiration and Hamilton has him for dinner despite the defeat of his father in law. He makes to write to Matthias and has to remind himself that Matthias too, has been taken by illness, on from this world.

Letters come from Sally, slower and slower until they stop altogether. Burr writes back to her, determinedly with single minded intention to provoke a response at all costs. He inquires after the house and the garden, and the health of her son, named Aaron in his honour.

The letter he gets back is not in Sally’s hand, but rather in that of her husband, informing him that her ill health had taken her some weeks past. So much death, so much illness. Burr slumps in his chair by the fire, under a portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft that his Theo had so loved. He feels tested to the last extremes of his endurance, like surely the world must peel apart and swallow him whole at any moment, or exalt him to his full potential – anything to shift the dead weight sitting in his heart.

His daughter crawls into his lap, eyes dry, “papa, you will not leave me, will you?”

“Of course not my dear,” Burr kisses the top of her head and holds her close, prayes that she will always maintain her firm constitution, she had siblings who did not after all, “you have many years ahead of you before you must bid me goodbye.”

Shortly after, he leaves the senate. He claims he finds it dull. Hamilton stops by some afternoons to press him about matters related to the constitution. He is pleasantly stunned by Theo’s quick witted contributions to their conversations, even though she is so young, and soon the three of them slip into French for the sheer joy of it.

“You are a lucky man,” Hamilton tells Burr as he leaves. Burr doesn’t feel so lucky, he feels drained. He presses on.

 

**A clean slate. Good politics.**

Looking back, it seems unclear as to how Burr ever came to find himself running for the presidency. For the second time no less. The years have been a whirl of contrivance and annoyance, the bank he founded under false pretenses, the duel he fought against Hamilton’s brother in law, Washington walking away from politics and John Adams stepping in to fill his place.

John Adams is an earnest man, unafraid of proving a nuisance to get his point across. In that way he is very similar to Hamilton, though it is known that the pair dislike each other immensely.

Hamilton in fact has few friends in his political circles, the ease with which he found companionship during the war is lost. Tempered by his sorrow at the loss of his son and the scandal he has brought upon his own head, perhaps, he has become prickly, and has little patience for Burr’s less seemly enterprises.

There was a bank, Burr did not say it would be a bank, he said it would be a water company. Hamilton was not best pleased. That is all beside the point.

Thomas Jefferson, a loud, obnoxious excuse for a politician has stepped back onto the scene, seemingly unaware that time has flown past and his contributions to the Declaration of Independence are the stuff of history. That was twenty four years ago, it feels longer, it feels shorter, when he closes his eyes Burr can still see bodies lining the shore of Kip’s Bay. He has not risen half as far as he might have hoped since that time.

Still, Burr has aligned himself with Jefferson in the past, plotting and scheming in ways which are no doubt unbecoming of his legacy but what can be done? The Democratic Republicans seemed to be the shortest path to honours in this nation as things stand. It doesn’t make it any harder to dedicate his energies to putting the man down wherever possible, a few trips to Monticello do not buy the entirety of Aaron Burr’s loyalties.

When the time comes, Hamilton stands up and declares that Burr has no great beliefs while Jefferson has beliefs that he can never agree with, and this makes Jefferson the stronger candidate.

Burr seethes, takes to his study to write a tirade against Hamilton once the results are in and Jefferson thoroughly defeats him. “I think you are a man of a great many principles,” Theo tells him, as if her word should be final.

Principals, surely. Burr does not think himself someone who has stood by and let the world role on without pausing to pass comment on the aspects of it that he finds distasteful. He has sent bills into the senate demanding they abolish the slave trade, that they allow women to vote, and these have been tossed aside. How can he account for another man’s perception of him when he has done all that could be asked of him.

Burr does everything asked of him, Hamilton does more. Hamilton does not apologise. Hamilton does not hesitate. Hamilton is willing to pay for his words with his life.

 

**Alexander Hamilton.**

The gun sits smoking in Burr’s stunned fingers, the sound of the second shot still echoing wearily around the clearing. The doctor is nowhere in sight, plausible deniability and all that. The smell of flesh and blood bared open, mixed with gunpowder, the smell of war is heavy in the air and no one is stepping in to stop it.

This is satisfaction, or a mockery of it. Hamilton lies groaning on the ground, his face twisted in pain. He was ever a short man, but he has never looked small in Burr’s eyes before now. It seems a pointless altercation to have dueled over in hindsight, no one will thank him for this.

Wait for it. He thinks, too late, far too late. The bear Hamilton back across the river, and by the afternoon Burr’s reputation is in ruins. He is a murderer, everyone loved Hamilton, he has done them all wrong.

Once upon a time there was a boy who looked at Burr with shining eyes and a heart full of hope, he had made Burr feel special, mighty. And then Burr shot him. There is a story of sorts in between the two events but who’s really counting? Who’s looking for friends in the crowd? For widows and widowers and orphans.

Burr used to carry messages between the Hamiltons – Alexander and Elizabeth – when the cabinet ran late sessions and there was no one else to stop by their family home and let them all know that their father would be late that night. He will never look Eliza in the eye again.

He flees to South Carolina, away from the prying gaze of northern politics. Theodosia is ready to meet him with open arms, her husband calling greetings from the parlour. She has a husband now, time has brought her that. A woman grown looking at her father’s face and trying not to count the new lines of age that have appeared since last they met. Burr sits out on the decking, looking at the rolling green grass of the gardens, where a little boy named Aaron plays, named for him.

It is the last time anyone will make moves in his honour.

 

**His political career.**

Years later, Burr sits in front of a New York jury that remembers him as one of the ones that got away the first time round. “I was never convicted of the murder of Alexander Hamilton,” he says tersely, and no one can deny that it’s true, any more than they can deny that the letters presented as damning evidence are convicted frauds.

So what happened? To bring him back here, to sit before a judge and wait for sentencing to fall upon his head? The city seethes at his very presence, a place that he once saved in the heat of battle, a column of men marching behind him and trusting that he would see them through the night. No one ever wants to talk about the time Aaron Burr saved the life of Alexander Hamilton, they never were much interested in his greater achievements.

Johnathan sits at his side, casual and cocky, sure he had no part in the affair. The story that is being placed upon their heads is that they have committed treason, tried to conquer parts of the land to the south. These pieces of land do not belong to them, or more specifically to Burr, seen as the principal instigator of the conspiracy.

There was no conspiracy. Or there was. It depends entirely on who you ask. Burr will drift off into old age thinking that the title King of Mexico would have suited him nicely, as to his intentions with the musket when he had set forth into the wilderness of a south so deep it is not yet American soil, that is anyone’s guess.

The American public guess him guilty, though the courts do not, and Johnathan’s fate is determined by association with his.

“What now?” Johnathan asks, quietly, when they are out of the courthouse and staring across the river to the state that was once a colony in which they were both born.

Burr shrugs, “not politics.” That seems fair enough. He has had enough arguments to last him a lifetime.

 

**His vigour.**

Europe then, would be the logical place to move his operations to. If America will not have him without cursing his name then Burr is determined to make for himself a new life here. He refuses to set down roots, become too attached to any monarchy. He fought too hard to let himself fall back in line with such sympathies unless it is his own head made heavy with the crown.

Hamilton had believed in monarchy, Burr remembers, sat atop the necropolis in Glasgow looking down into the city. There are many people with the name Hamilton buried in this graveyard, not so far from the city there is a whole castle owned by the Hamilton’s.

It couldn’t be…surely they aren’t related to Alexander Hamilton, first secretary of the treasury of the United States of America. Burr thinks about elected monarchs and all the pieces of the constitution Hamilton wrote but never ratified – he could not convince people of everything.

He moves through France, Germany, wherever he must move next. He practices law, he tries not to concern himself with thoughts of America, save for when a letter from Theo reaches him, promising she is saving up funds for when he returns.

And Burr will return, just four years after he first braved the Atlantic he sails back to America, he becomes Aaron Edwards for a time in the hope that any unkind feelings the public may still harbour for him can direct themselves away from his ears.

All the while, in a place called The Grange, Scotland, a man named Alexander Hamilton is the head of the household. He neither knows nor cares that he is the second cousin of the first secretary of the treasury of the United States of America. He cares even less that he will never meet his kin.

 

**Aaron Alston**

It would have had to be a small box, a child’s coffin, Aaron Edwards thinks to himself. He has buried too many of his children and doesn’t begrudge Theo her relative silence.

It is unimaginable, to lose a child. Wait for it, he writes in response when she asks how far this grief will stretch. It will never leave her. It will never leave either of them.

 

**Theodosia Alston (née Burr).**

First it is an understanding that correspondence takes time to reach him here, especially when it must travel by sea. Burr sits in the kitchen of his New York home and eats breakfast with impatient resignation to the fact that the post today brings him no news of his daughter’s date of arrival in the city.

Next comes a moderate annoyance with the sloth of the postal service. Surely there is no need for a simple letter to take this long to reach him. At this stage Theo will arrive on the docks and he will not be adequately prepared to meet her.

Then panic begins to set in, cold as a stone atop the pile of rubble that litters the pit of Burr’s stomach. He tries to pretend he doesn’t know what’s going on – this has happened to him too many times. He wants to breathe free, he wants to sit under his own vine unafraid, safe in this nation he has helped to build. Where is the gratitude? Where is the compensation? The lives of heroes are not supposed to be so dire and grey, this has passed the point of Greek tragedy to become farce.

Burr paces the halls of the central post office, the edges of New York piers, scanning the horizon for incoming ships and letting himself feel a new wave of despair every time they are not carrying his Theo into his arms. He does not mean to torture himself so, hope can be so crippling when it’s the last thing holding you together.

What right does Aaron Burr have to hope?

Theo had never read in English when she could avoid it, her mind had been sharp enough for any language you cared to throw before her. Burr finds old children’s stories in foreign tongues that he remembers her being too young to read on her own, shoved in amongst the more serious texts in Latin and French that populate the little bookcase in the room that was once hers. He reads them aloud to the empty house, till his tongue begins to trip and his cheeks wet with memories of a little girl who knew her worth and knew her mind.

Stories float back to Burr from far across the waves. In them, Theo is washed ashore on an unknown island where she marries a native prince and lives out the rest of her days in harmony. It sounds far-fetched to him, his daughter couldn’t live without books. But it sounds like a peaceful kind of heaven. Wherever she is, he hopes she’s with her mother.

 

**Johnathan Dayton.**

There can be no argument that Burr is not a young man at this time. The news of Johnathan’s death comes with a dull thud, another nail in the coffin. Living is so damn hard.

The list of things which tie him to the mortal coil grow ever shorter, his friends falling off it at such a pace that he rarely has time to catch his breath before another seat at the table of this life is vacated. Aaron Ogden writes him long letters reminiscing about green grass, Sally’s flyaway hair, Matthias’s undoubtable leadership, Johnathan following the older boys with hopeless abandon.

 _Just the two of us now._ The letter ends. Only one of them will ever be able to call himself the last of those children left standing. They are both sixty eight years old and the clock ticks ever more rapidly at the back of their minds.

“When will it be me?” Burr asks an empty church. The walls are silent, he never had enough conviction for the absolution of real faith. If he strains his ears, he could almost swear they are telling him to wait, to have patience.

All this time has been given to him, and he has no idea what to make of it. What would the world be like if he had gone in place of one of the people who he had loved? He keeps asking questions, hoping for answers that will never come.

 

**Thomas Jefferson. John Adams.**

No one is as surprised as they should be to hear of the passing of Jefferson and Adams. No one who knew them, that is, though the list of people who could claim that honour grows shorter by the year.

July the fourth, eighteen twenty six, fifty years after Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence was first sung across the land and the ensuing hurricane of cause and effect brought down a storm upon not just their little corner of the world but the whole globe. The American Experiment, repeated with increasing rapidity. They won.

Jefferson beat Adams to it, by a matter of hours if the papers would be believed, but they died on the same day. Of illness, it’s always illness, and thought their bodies may be buried they reputation lives on. Legacy, proper legacy, more than Aaron Burr could ever hope for. They will be remembered as the great architects of independence in their times, the founding fathers of the free.

Sometimes people stop Burr on the streets, and ask him if he is who they think he is, the man who killed Alexander Hamilton.

“Ah,” Burr always makes the stutter sound natural, “Hamilton. My friend who I shot.” It has been so long now that to appear properly regretful about the matter seems disingenuous to his younger self, who had not hesitated to fire his pistol. If this is what he will be remembered for, he will be remembered for it right.

Jefferson and Adams are remembered as presidents, statues start to go up in their honour no sooner than their bodies are in the ground. No one wants to give themselves a chance to forget what they have done for the nation. Neither of them fought in the war.

“Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me." Burr tells a student who seems fascinated by the prospect of standing in front of a man who has supposedly done so much evil. The trouble is, Burr is just a man.

The villain he has been raised up as doesn’t exist, but he finds people quote the line about Voltaire. Perhaps he can be remembered as a cruel man with a sharp tongue, at least then he would not be forgotten.

 

**His fortunes. Another marriage**

The money runs out. He spent it all on a kingship he never won, the education of young women he didn't father and the prostitutes that now visit the house on an almost daily basis. He tries to talk them into proper conversation, asking about their stance on current political affairs and their favourite authors. They never reply. They were not raised like his Theo, they never had a chance.

He marries again, because it has been so long and it seems like the thing to do. Eliza Jumel is a sweet woman with no patience, nearly twenty years his junior and with no stomach for his debts. She is in the house no more than six months before she packs up and leaves. Burr doesn’t blame her.

Hamilton had been married to a woman called Eliza. Her name is still in the mouths of many in New York. She is still alive, outliving all these great men. She will outlive Burr, he knows as much, in spirit if not in name.

 

 **His body.**  
This is where the waiting begins in earnest, where the clock can’t tick fast enough. Time becomes a never ending loop of mundane sights and activities prescribed by doctors unable to hear his opinion on the matter.

They call it a stroke, a problem with his brain that affects the rest of his body. Burr sits in plush chairs, cared for by someone else’s children. He cannot move his body, he cannot control his bodily functions. The incontinence is humiliating, the loneliness more so. Aaron Ogden comes by once, early on to see him, and after that sends infrequent letters. He must be quite a sight, who would want to stay to keep him company?

In between the hours of staring into whatever space has been put in front of him for that day, Burr prays to a God he may or may not have put his faith in that death will come for him soon.

Fate is cruel, it makes him wait. A full two years no less. Two years to pry his patient, cautious fingers from the roots of the world around him. His hair has never grown back and Burr is still a blank slate, wide eyes, blending in or fading out. He catches his reflection in the mirror and sees his skin sallow and worn. He is ready to go, he’s so sure, he has no idea what’s keeping him here. Seventy eight years old with no one left to mourn him – what is the point?

They painted portraits of him, in his glory days, when politics was fun and the arguments hadn’t been entirely argued out of him. The painter had been pleased with his work, smiling small and proud at the likeness he had created. Burr thinks back to the bright, lively eyes he had seen in that portrait – they hadn’t looked like paint.

 

**Aaron Burr.**

The dark doesn’t cede to light all at once. Dying is a slow process, but it is so easy. The mind carries you to where you need to be, and then it lets you go. It happens with delightful inevitability, not a moment too soon or late. Wait for it. Patience is all.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sure this is one of many fics in a similar vein following the trials and tribulations of A.Burr. Whatever, I'm relatively new to the fandom. I have attempted to keep this historically accurate without making it unnecessarily long, so events have been glossed over or missed with great abandon.


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